The Farmstead

I have ambitions of writing up monthly music roundups. We'll see how long I last, lol.

First, to make sense of my music listening at all (and reading, and movie watching, and...) it's important to know that my brain ties media really closely to the season and the weather, so whatever time of year I first read/watched/heard that thing, that's when I want to do so again. At this point I'm familiar enough with how this works that I can explicitly identify music that will make my brain happy for various scenarios. "Cold and sunny? Time for Endless Summer Vacation again."

Themes of the month
1. Women of hip hop! I returned to my old favorites Glorilla and Doechii (discovered January 2025). I also listened to a TON of music by other artists. I went through several Megan albums, Cardi B's most recent album, and then spread out and explored albums by a bunch of newer artists like Monaleo and KenTheMan.

2. Standing on the Shoulders of Giants by Oasis (discovered January 2020). It turns out my fancy earbuds combined with being able to download music in higher quality means I can hear more things. In fact I found out in January why "Fuckin' in the Bushes" has that title. Overall this will never be an absolute favorite, but Gas Panic and Where Did It All Go Wrong are always great, Roll It Over is solid even though it was better live, and I guess I'm warming up to Go Let It Out. Also I don't care if Put Your Money With Your Mouth Is is nonsense fluff, it's a vibe, don't @ me.

3. Love and War by Fleurie, an album apparently designed specifically to make fanvids to, or possibly to use for end credits. (Or even to get sampled by Kendrick Lamar, just to cross some streams.) I first heard it in December and listened to it some more this month. Is "cinematic emo soprano" a genre? Great stuff.

Top artists (by # of streams)
1. Oasis
2. Megan Thee Stallion
3. Glorilla
4. Cardi B

Favorite songs:
* girl, get up by Doechii featuring SZA. This one really grew on me: that mellow beat, SZA singing the refrain on the chorus, and of course Doechii doing her thing. "I'll address it on the album." Yesssssssssss, I cannot WAIT.

* S/O to Me by Latto. I'm really conflicted about this one, because I love her flow and the theme of forging her own path, but OTOH the whole verse about how she doesn't like women and specifically doesn't want to hear about "post-partum or menopause" feels pretty gross. A very mixed bag. Still one of the songs I listened to the most this month.

* Accent by Megan Thee Stallion featuring Glorilla. Dark heavy beat with very silly subject matter. Just a fun time.

* Wrong One by Glorilla featuring a bunch of other female rappers. Glorilla and her girl group!! Again, just fun.

New artist to follow:
YK Niece, entirely for Goin On and specifically the "way way bigger" line. I love it so much.

Impromptu (1991). Writer George Sand (Judy Davis) strives to avoid past lovers, romance the man of her dreams (Chopin, played by Hugh Grant), and find peace and quiet to write novels.

The movie's strongest point is its cast. I'd not seen Judy Davis before but absolutely fell in love with her here, and Bernadette Peters as the scheming one-time BFF is wonderful, at first charming and later pitiable. Emma Thompson has a smaller, purely comedic part as a duchess desperate to become a patron of the arts, and she's also delightful. There are also some male actors, and they were fine. (I know everyone loves Julian Sands, and he's very nice to look at, but I'm unpersuaded by his acting chops.)

Wikipedia calls this movie a "historical film," which conveniently saves anyone from having to identify the tone. Is it a comedy? A romance? A drama? Possibly all of the above? I enjoyed it for the actors and the discussion of the arts, and I'm interested to learn more about George Sand, but it felt like a movie that wasn't entirely sure what it wanted to be.

I was inspired to watch this because of sophiahelix's excellent Yuletide fic for it, which I enjoyed even more rereading after seeing the movie.

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The Secret Agent (2025). A research scientist in 1970s Brazil is targeted by a corrupt capitalist and hides out under a false name while trying to get the documents for him and his son to flee the country.

My understanding of this movie going in was that it was a 70s-esque thriller, but a very slow burn. I guess that's not untrue, exactly, but "slow burn" is a bit optimistic tbh. I can appreciate the artistic craftsmanship on display here, and as a portrait of people going about their daily lives amidst pervasive corruption, it was very good. I also enjoyed the occasional cuts to the present day of two women transcribing cassette tapes recorded during the main action of the movie, and how that juxtaposition worked of tension in the past vs reconstructing the events fifty years later. OTOH, I found the left turn in narrative structure towards the end pretty unsatisfying.

Overall, I get what the movie was doing, and I think it did it well; I just wasn't into it.

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The Testament of Ann Lee (2026). The Shakers were an off-shoot of the Quakers who, per the movie, were given to physical motion ("shaking") as a form of worship leading to religious ecstasy and who eventually adopted a doctrine of total abstinence. Amanda Seyfried stars as Ann Lee, the English prophet of the Shaker sect who leads them to America in the mid-1700s. Also it's kind of a musical?

I've seen people say that Robert Eggers's movie The Witch is a horror story from within a Puritan worldview, and I've never quite been able to wrap my head around that framing, but Testament of Ann Lee is 1000% a story about a fringe religious sect from the sect's POV. If you've ever wanted folk horror without the horror part, this movie is it. The script is heavily inspired by contemporary accounts of Lee by her followers, and the movie is entirely committed to that version of events, complete with visions and apparent miracles.

The movie is gorgeous, and so much of it is given over to the religious music and dance that in places it feels more like an experience than a narrative. It's more interested in conveying the emotional life of these characters than in strict realism, so some of it feels heightened in a way that I really liked, without trying to be deliberately distracting. So for example, at one point in one of the climactic musical sequences, an electric guitar comes in. That heightened approach makes the extensive musical worship sequences feel organic and necessary, which is why I hesitate to call the movie a musical in the conventional sense; the music and dancing is almost entirely diagetic, even if choreographed to a degree unlikely in real life.

If it's not apparent by now, I loved this. Beautifully shot, incredible integration of the worship sequences, Seyfried was incredible. It was great to see a movie where the weird prophet was a woman and yet the movie still treats her with utter seriousness. There were moments where I could have done with a bit more on-screen illustration of events that get relegated to voiceover, but it's a small quibble.

I found a quote from director Mona Fastvold that she initially struggled to find support for the project due to "zero interest" form the industry, to which I can only say, no shit. I honestly have no idea how this got made, but I'm so glad it did. I have never had a movie experience like this before.

Every time I think about making a post, it just makes me tired. This is how fic writing is going also. Anyway, some things I would post about if I had the energy:

- Heated Rivalry
- movies I've seen (Impromptu, Testament of Ann Lee)
- my recent hip hop binge and especially why I like Glorilla so much
- the Oscars
- like five different snowflake_challenge posts